


Good Riddance

by ThiaQuiche



Category: West of Loathing (Video Game)
Genre: As in this is set in a late game area, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Light Angst, Location Spoilers, Mild Language, Necromancy, Not Beta Read, Vague reference to some canon story stuff but nothing detailed enough for me to count it as spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28540722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThiaQuiche/pseuds/ThiaQuiche
Summary: In the depths of Jumbleneck Mine, Alice discovers the questionable reading material Boyd has been lugging around. It’s high time to get rid of it.
Relationships: Doc Alice & Boyd Hartson, Doc Alice & Original Male Character
Comments: 1





	Good Riddance

**Author's Note:**

> Figured this fandom could use a little more fanfiction :P Big thanks to my friend Katie for introducing me to this game. This may be my first fic posted on Ao3, and my first fic posted anywhere in a long time, but I’m not a new writer. Feel free to critique to your heart’s content, so long as it’s constructive, of course.

“A pit. That’s what you dragged me down here for.” Alice wore a look of disinterest bordering more on irritation than her usual looks of disinterest.

“Deep pit.” Boyd’s expression was frustratingly inscrutable in comparison to hers — not that that especially bothered her. If he felt more comfortable with that bandana across his face, she wasn’t about to tell him to take it off, and the perpetual darkness that half shrouded his eyes wasn’t anything he could get rid of anyway.

“A deep pit, huh? You don’t say.” Alice took a long swig from her whiskey bottle. “If that’s all, I’m goin’ back up. You know where I’ll be.”

“It’s bottomless.”

“Hm?”

Boyd chucked a rock into the pit. “Watch.”

Alice watched.

A minute passed. The only things they could hear were the sounds of their own breathing and the crunching of dust beneath their boots.

Two minutes, and the silence was deafening.

Three, and Alice let out a low whistle.

“All right,” she said, “you win. That is an impressively large lot of nothin’. Lemme guess, you wanna throw stuff into it so it’ll be lost to the world forever?”

Boyd hefted an eerie silver idol and threw it like a shot put into the depths. Alice chuckled.

“Guess that’s a yes, then.”

He held out a book to her.

“Oh, want me to do the honours on this?” Alice grinned, but the expression froze on her face as she took in the book’s title. “Introductory Nex-Mex….”

She looked up at him as he slowly withdrew a fistful of similar-looking books from the depths of his bag. Boyd was a large man — the stack of books was bigger than her head. Fundamentals of Nex-Mex, Horrifying Concepts of Nex-Mex, Dangerously Advanced Nex-Mex — the books numbered six in total, including the one Alice was holding with a white-knuckled grip.

“Boyd.” Her voice was low and dangerous, but she could feel a wobble deep in her throat. “Where did you get these.”

He shrugged, and drew back his arm to hurl them into the abyss. But Alice wasn’t done. She grabbed his wrist.

“How long have you had them?”

He shrugged again.

Alice’s grip grew tighter. Frightful energy was beginning to pulse through her limbs and hammer in her chest.

“Have you read them?”

Boyd just cocked an eyebrow at her. Or it looked that way. It was so awfully hard to see his face.

“That’s not an answer!” She hissed. The awful hysteria was rising in her, and even if she’d had the presence of mind to remember her whiskey bottle, it was doubtful that would have helped.

He set the necromancy books down and gently patted the hand that held him.

“They’re still intact, aren’t they?” He said, and all at once the fight drained out of her.

He was right. Of course he was right, no book he read ever stayed intact more than a few minutes after he turned the last page. They had laughed about it before, but now it was immensely reassuring. Boyd hadn’t learned necromancy, she could be as sure of that as she was that the sun set in the west.

“...Why’d you keep ‘em, then?” She asked, quieter now.

“I was trying to destroy them.” It was only then that Alice noticed what rough shape the book she held was in. Water damage had curled the edges of the pages. Ash coated her fingertips where they touched one scorched edge of the cover, and the spine was strained like someone had tried and failed to tear the book in two. She turned it over. The back cover was peppered with bullet-sized indentations. But all that damage seemed superficial. The book was still intact.

“Damn.”

Boyd nodded. “Magic, probably.”

“That, or necromancers sure know how to make books. You could probably armour yourself with these things.”

“Probably,” he chuckled. “If they can be destroyed without bein’ read first, I don’t know how to do it. So — “

“Lost to the world it is?”

“Lost to the world it is.”

Alice hefted the book in her hand. Necromancy had no place in this world. Even ignoring the religious heresies and sacrileges of the practice — which she was fine to ignore, she had no horse in that race — necromancy caused too much pain, to her personally and to the world at large. They had already killed the Necromancer. But now they could cripple that evil more directly. They could bring the world one step closer to ensuring that no new Necromancer would ever rise to power again.

She hurled Introductory Nex-Mex into the void, and watched as it and its companion volumes were swallowed by the darkness, hopefully never to emerge.

“Good riddance.”


End file.
